“First, you go home and get some sleep. You look dead on your feet.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’s true. Go get some rest and I’ll stay here and hassle them a little more about maybe checking on his hands. If he’s injured badly we’ll have to cancel the Phi Kap gig and save his strength for the battle. I’ll come home soon and crash and we can come back tomorrow evening and pick him up.”
We hug goodbye but when I pull EmmyLou into my driveway I sit for a few moments, reliving the fight I never saw coming.
I wish I’d asked Dallas the question I need the answer to the most.
After everything, after Gavin is out of jail, after I demand they come clean about the year I was in Houston and everything is out in the open . . . then what?
18 | Gavin
“SHE CANNOT SEE me like this, Dallas. I mean it.” I’m gripping the phone tightly and my right leg is bouncing so rapidly I look like I’m having withdrawal symptoms.
He nods on the other side of the glass. “I know. But listen, the situation with your attorney and Dixie facing off . . . It’s like I said before, either you’re going to come clean about the past or it’s going to get out ahead of you. You need to talk to her. Soon.”
I nod several times. “I will.”
“She says she’s not doing the battle or moving forward with the band until we come clean about everything. I don’t think she’s kidding.”
“I don’t think she is, either.” I bite a loose piece of skin off the side of my thumb. “And I don’t know if she’s going to be able to go through with it if she knows everything. Especially after what she saw last night.”
He doesn’t say anything right away but his demeanor changes dramatically and I know he wants to cuss. “What she saw, Gavin, was a child abuser get what he deserved. Stop beating yourself up already. Speaking of beatings, how’s the hand?”
My eyes drop to the swollen, bruised, and scabbed-over knuckles on my right hand.
“Still attached.”
Dallas frowns. “I’m serious, man. Between worrying about whether or not Dixie’s going to bail because of your bullshit or if your hand is going to be functioning by Friday night, I am stressed the fuck out.”
All I can do is give him the “sorry I’m such a major fuckup” look that I have to give a lot of people that I disappoint.
The officer standing behind me gives the two-minute warning.
Dallas appears to be doing a sort of deep-breathing thing Robyn probably makes him do.
“You okay, man?”
“Yeah, just trying to get centered,” he tells me.
“Centered, huh? How’s that working out for you?”
He smirks. “Scale of one to ten, how centered do I seem?” He rakes his free hand through his hair and my honest answer is negative fifteen.
“Five. Give or take a few.”
Dallas shakes his head. “Sometimes I think I should just call Robyn’s uncle and see if he needs me to play backup guitar for his Elvis act.”
I open my mouth to make a joke, but then I remember something important—something that kept me awake all night other than the sweat-and urine-scented mattress I had to try to sleep on in a six-by-eight cell.
“Wait,” I say when the officer taps me on the shoulder, meaning I have thirty seconds left. “I need you to do something for me,” I say to Dallas.
“I know, man. We’ll be back in a few short hours to pick you up. Your attorney said it could be as early as six or as late as eight thirty.”
I want to laugh at Dallas because, God love him, I’m not scheduling a fucking manscaping appointment. I’m in jail. They can let me out—or not—whenever they feel like it.